I snapped a few pictures from the airplane on the way back to D.C. last weekend. The shimmering glow of the horizon caught my attention, and I grabbed the camera.
I don’t think we were quite at 30,000 feet, but I was looking at the vast expanse of only a tiny fraction of the earth’s surface. Beautiful.
I couldn’t help but laugh about the so-called land shortage. As I saw it from the air, there is no shortage of land. (That photo was taken as we got closer to D.C., but further out, the land was even greener.) The problem is government regulation of land, bureaucrats telling owners where they can and can’t build. There’s more than enough space out there for everyone, in my opinion, but different groups have different incentives to build or not to build in that space.
For instance, in my own area, lawmakers, both liberal and conservative, support what’s known as “Smart Growth.” (Also see Regional ‘Smart-Growth’ Campaign Goes Online) The big idea is that you build houses and apartments closer to public transportation, creating “mixed use” urban centers where people can work, play, and live. This will supposedly alleviate the region’s dreadful traffic congestion.
Conservative types in areas like Loudoun County, Virginia, support Smart Growth because they don’t want a bunch of people ruining the neighborhood. Right-leaning folks supporting more government control. Ironic. Back in the day, people regulated themselves in the form of restrictive covenants in deeds (to not sell to blacks, for example) of their private property. We could spend all day arguing about whether they had a right to refuse to sell to blacks, but that’s another post.
Anti-big government folks once scoffed at government regulation (civil rights laws, for example) and people in Washington telling them what they could and couldn’t do with their own property. Times have changed. Government has gotten bigger and greedier. Thanks, George Bush.
To an extent, I understand why both sets of groups — young, single urban dwellers vs. older, married suburbans and exurbans with young children — support land use restrictions. For the first group, usually liberal types, it’s a chance to do something “good,” to reduce pollution and create a “diverse” area where all kinds of people are clustered in the same area, and everything is lovely and multicultural. In socialist utopias, there is no crime.
As for the second group, part of the reason they left the cities was to raise children in safer areas with less crime and more and less expensive space. When city dwellers flock to the suburbs, the demand for housing increases, which tends to raise the costs. And part of the allure of life outside the city was fewer people, and fewer of a certain kind of people.
Let’s be honest here. We know that illegal aliens are everywhere. Their culture is different from ours, and some don’t seem interested in assimilating into American culture. And there’s the gang problem. Virginia has a gang problem! (See Gang follows illegal aliens.)
I intended to blog about Thomas Sowell’s latest column, Rich Ideas, but I went in a different direction. Toward the end, after reading this paragraph…
Of all the romantic self-indulgences of the affluent and the wealthy, few are more ridiculous than their passion to “save” farmland. This country has no shortage of farmland or of food.
…I thought about the pictures I’d taken from the plane.
When it comes to government regulation, is there really a difference between conservatives and liberals? I’m beginning to think not. It all comes down to incentives and who stands to gain the most from which regulation.
You can count on one thing in this life, if nothing else: human nature will never change.
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I agreed with Thomas Sowell’s column up to the paragraph about saving the farmland. I think the desire to save the farmland isn’t just for the wealthy. A lot of people see the value in the honest work, and for me reminds me of my family’s heritage of farming back through the 1800’s. There is something good for the soul about living a slower pace outside the big city.
“The big idea is that you build houses and apartments closer to public transportation creating “mixed use” urban centers where people can live, work and play.”——LaShawn
In other words: Let’s herd the masses into glorified Tenements and decorative Housing Projects, whether they wish to go or not.
Over 30 years of failed Urban Planning hasn’t yet acknowledged that, our Grandparents, and their Grandparents, fled those sorts of urban public works housing….for suburbs, and private homes like Long Island and the San Fernando Valley….to get away from this “mixed-use” that Government/Urban Planners are now trying to move people back into.
In Los Angeles, public transportation has failed. It’s car culture. The people have spoken. We like our cars.
Hel-lo???!!!! We want to live beside our private garages……not on top of a subway station!
All the money that’s being thrown toward “Urban Investment”….. All this ill-conceived “mixed-use” nonsense will become, once again, abandoned urban blight—- as soon as the Urban Dwellers get enough money to buy the standard suburban home—which is what most want.
LaShawn,
A while back I made a comment on one of your posts that the current “two party” system is just the right and left wings of the Big Government Party that only wishes to empose more and more control over individuals. I think that you are starting to see my point.
M. Woodward
“In Los Angeles, public transportation has failed. It’s car culture. ”
What happened to the LA streetcar?
A few quick points here. An impression from a fly-over is just that–an impression. There are plenty of reasons why some of our open spaces don’t have much population. For example, in the West, water is a major constraint.
The fact that apartments and office space in “Smart Growth” areas command high rents is evidence of their popularity and desirability.
The presence of illegal aliens is not a large factor in most people’s decision of where to live. Most crime in America is committed by American citizens.
Sprawl has social conseqences. In the Washington area where La Shawn lives, commuters curse their commutes.
America subsidizes the cost of oil in many ways, not the least of which is war.
Automobiles cause air pollution and endanger lives. Thanks to safer cars, safer roads, stricter enforcement of DUI laws, and driver education, traffic deaths are down, but still tens of thousands of Americans die every year in traffic.
The world’s supply of petroleum was created over tens or hundreds of millions of years. In under 200 years, humanity will have used most of it up. Whether you’re a liberal or a conservative, it’s smart to plan for what’s next. Arranging our lives so we don’t need to drive so much is just plain smart.
There is also the issue of ecological footprint. La Shawn and others seem to think that we have a huge supply of land, but in fact, “If everyone on Earth lived like the average American, we’d need at least four more Earths to provide all the materials and energy to sustain that level of consumption.” See: http://www.rprogress.org/newprojects/ecolFoot/methods/usfootprint.html
For more info on this topic, google “ecological footprint” (with the quotes) — there are over 200,000 hits.
Funny you bring that up today. Just this morning a local conservative talk show host described this as a U.N. initiative disguised with plenty of happy terminology. Watch out for the word “sustainable”!
Recently, Greenies attacked Bush for reversing Clinton’s “land grab” of “pristine wilderness” –
forbidding building roads and logging on “pristine Federal land”. Bush wants to let the States decide how to use the land.
Some NPR “pundit” said that the States are unlikely to “destroy” this “pristine land” with road building or logging, because most of this land is too remote and rugged to be of any commercial use.
So, in truth, Clinton et al gave the Greenies a “present” that cost him nothing, and was worth nothing. Quite Clintonesque – and they bought into it.
Now Bush is “returning pristine Federal land” to the States. Again, giving away nothing that costs nothing.
As a transplanted Yankee, I gotta give credit to these two “Southern White Boys” – they both outsmarted the Yankee and CA White Boy elites of the Sierra Club.
And there is still plenty of land to develop, as you demonstrated with your photo.
Tract housing for everybody….!! 1 house on every three acres or less in Loudoun…we dont need no stikin open space…when my septic system starts to contaminate my neighbors well…well.. we will both sue the County Govt.
LaShawn the pendulum swings wide in my beloved Loudoun. So far there has been no politician elected that is able to lessen the swing in order to reach a reasonable compromise on the land use issues.
“stinkin open space” sorry
LaShawn: “The shimmering glow of the horizon caught my attention, and I grabbed the camera. ”
Did that shimmering glow make you think of government regulation?
Any commute in the Washington DC area would prove that we don’t have a land shortage; merely a people surplus. Sure the land is there, but we do not have the roads and infrastructure for more people in my opinion.
The recent discovery of living ivory-billed woodpeckers in Arkansas reminds us of the preciousness of all of God’s creation and the importance of preserving wild places forever. The ivory-billed woodpecker finds food only in standing dead trees, and survives only in large wild stands of such trees. We have received a rare second chance to preserve one of God’s great creatures. We won’t get a third chance.
We like Loudoun but we’re weary of the growth, the traffic, the big ugly pretentious houses that are just ordinary tract houses made with fake brick facades. I don’t have an answer but I liked the zoning rules because the sprawl here makes the county feel like San Jose.
And I, for one, liked living near immigrants in CA. It was enriching for my children to be around other cultures and besides, the tacos here suck.
ivory-billed woodpecker finds food only in standing dead trees
Send them to DC. There’s plenty of deadwood hanging around the Senate and the House.
Anomalocaris: WRONG! That is WRONG!
Firstly, Immigration has played a major part in the decisions of where people live. Plus, apartments and office space command such exorbitant prices in these places is bacause futher development is all but prohibited, artificially driving up the price of existing housing and commercial spaces. There are those who wish to live stacked on top of one another. I do not.
Still, there is a small facet of truth in what you say. There is a over-dependence of the automobile. The solution is to move away from the situation we have today: that of a colossal mist of atomized individuals commuting hither and thither and a return to real, self-sustaining communites. We need less greater Los Angeleses and more Mayberry.
A move to a Chestertonian distributist society? Well, maybe. When a family owns their own land, they are more inclined to maintain it, including the wildlife. As usual, these “smart-growth” governmental plans only exascerbates that which we hate.
I have no idea why that posted twice. Sorry, Webmistress.
Prepare for your punishment… – Admin
Mark,
Things like distributed computing and communications are part of the solution. Companies are starting to see that not everyone needs to be in the same building to work together. More and more companies have either smaller offices spread out, or have remote workers with no office at all. I think this trend will continue. And I see this as another incentive for people to get educated and get modern work skills. They won’t ensure you get a good job, but their lack will ensure you won’t get one.
Scuzzy-
That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all day.
The USA was founded on the principles of property rights and home ownership.
When you go to East Germany and parts of Russia, you see those large-scale tenements and high rise public housing everywhere.
I’ll take a tacky tract home any day, rather than live like that.
La Shawn,
“Government has gotten bigger and greedier. Thanks, George Bush.”
I’m not quite sure how this applies to your main topic on land use. Is it just an excuse to take a drive-by shot at W?
The truth about democracy is that, in addition to the need for people to vote, we need people willing to run for elected office. Since, theologically, I believe that we all are fallen, there is no other possibility than having fallen people running for office. The problem for Republicans is that now that they seem to be in the ascendancy, there will be many people running for office as Republicans as a matter of expediency. The problem can only get worse.
Disputes on land use versus the rights of property owners has a long history. Here in the West you can throw in water rights. There is a book called “The Minutemen” that discusses the problem of a people beginning to learn how to deal with competing self-interests.
I’m not sure about the point, you’re trying to make in this post.
I, personally, am happy that zoning codes forbid a near neighbor from selling to someone who will open up a motorcycle repair shop.
Anom, I’m curious when you say:
“The world’s supply of petroleum was created over tens or hundreds of millions of years. In under 200 years, humanity will have used most of it up…”
Surely as a student of exinct fish, you’re not suggesting that our petroleum age depends on fossil fuels, are you?
Seems to me that Russian scientist have proven beyond a shadow of doubt over 20 years ago that petroleum crude does not come from compressed, decomposing T-Rexes. Something to do with inert materials…
One or the other can’t be right, likewise, both can be wrong. Is this because we simply don’t know, or are we being bamboozled by the neo-naturalists?
Let me see if I got the eco-freaks’ logic untwisted: ‘life is finte, dinosaurs were finite, ∴ the byproduct of dino biomass is finite. Why, on MotherNature’s green earth, can’t we get along with GAIA?
Does the fact that Earth itself is the source of petroleum somehow upset the left’s reality-based orthodoxy? Talk about the plight of Gallieo!!!
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